Charles Marsh

Title: The Last Days: A Son's Story Of Sin And Segregation At The Dawn Of A New South

Author: Charles Marsh

ISBN: 9780465044184

Page: 315

Format: Hardcover

Seeking to come to terms with the haunting memories of his childhood in the deep South Charles Marsh has crafted a memoir of small town Southern life caught up in the whirlwind of the Civil Rights movement As minister of the First Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, Charles Marsh s father Bob Marsh, was a prominent man who was beloved by the community But Laurel was aSeeking to come to terms with the haunting memories of his childhood in the deep South Charles Marsh has crafted a memoir of small town Southern life caught up in the whirlwind of the Civil Rights movement As minister of the First Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, Charles Marsh s father Bob Marsh, was a prominent man who was beloved by the community But Laurel was also home to Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Mississippi KKK and the director of their daily, unchallenged installments of terror and misery Bowers was known and tolerated by the entire white community of Laurel This included Bob Marsh, who struggled to do the right thing while reeling between righteous indignation and moral torpor, only slowly awakening to fear, suffering, and guilt over his unwillingness to take a public stand against Bowers At the same time, The Last Days examines the collision of worlds once divided white Protestant conservatism, the African American struggle for civil rights, and late 1960s counter culture that propelled the dramatic changes in everyday life in a small Southern town.

Recent Comments "The Last Days: A Son's Story Of Sin And Segregation At The Dawn Of A New South"

I have been picking up copies of books about the late 196os and about Watergate at used book sales and in used book stores for a few months now. This is memoir is one of the books about the late 1960s. Charles Marsh writes about his childhood and early adolescence as a Baptist Minister's son in 1960s Alabama and Mississippi. He spends part of his childhood in Laurel, MI, a town that struggles to come to terms with the KKK and desegregation as his father struggles to come to terms with the Civil [...]

The Last Days is a book written by Charles Marsh, who is a professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. Mr. Marsh grew up during the 60's when racial segregation was the norm, and stepping outside the established racial boundaries established by society, especially in the South, was strictly forbidden (and could lead to the loss of a job, and your life). His father was a Baptist minister, and while he wasn't a integrationist, the treatment that black people receiv [...]

The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South offers a compelling new version of an old story: how good people acquiesce to evil, and then find strength to overcome it. At his best, author Charles Marsh (God's Long Summer) recalls the elegiac prose of Southern writers such as Harper Lee. His memoir begins radiantly:One spring afternoon in 1967, when the warm Alabama air was perfumed with honeysuckle and scuppernong, my father and I were walking along a dirt path [...]

"The Last Days is, by turns, a harrowing, despairing, hopeful, and humorously mocking coming-of-age story. A good and important book." -- Gerald Early, author of The Culture of Bruising"An intense journey of faith and redemption." -- Charles Reagan Wilson, Director, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi"Charles Marsh puts us ringside for one of America’s definitive encounters and we are compelled to take sides." -- Will D. Campbell, author of Brother to a Dragonfl [...]

A good book and a nice writing style. The author paints a vivid picture of the demise of the KKK and of segregation, even if he does use broad strokes. A book of this size doesn't have much room for nuance, but I did find his characters (several of whom I know/knew) to resemble caricatures or types, whose primary function was to illustrate the religious hypocracy and blindness that existed along side the outright racists elements of white Mississippi culture in the late 1960s. The exception is t [...]

This book was moving. It has set on my shelves for a number of yearswasn't really sure what it was about. As I began reading I was pulled in. Since the author is about my age, I personally remember elements of his story though my memories are probably from television, news, and sucht personal like that of Dr. Marsh.I strongly recommend this book. I will/have recommended it to family and friends. I see here not only the story of a young man growing up during the days of the civil rights movement, [...]

This is a very interesting memoir of a boy growing up in a Southern Baptist pastor's home in racist Mississippi in the 60s. One of the interesting things that I am inferring from the book is that the rise of the Christian day school movement in the late 60s and 70s was related at least in part to the federal mandate to desegregate the public schools--under the guise of obeying God in training children--sickening.

A great read. This is a fascinating insight into the life of a white pastor's family in the deep south in the 1960s. It deftly explores the connections between race and religion while enabling readers to identify with the family drama, social issues, and religious concerns inherent in society-- both then and now.